Welcome to an honest presentation
of one of America's toughest debates,How to deal with Abortion ?

What's the problem ?

How did these Republicans get into the wombs of so many American women? With a lot of help from Conservative clergymen, most of them Roman Catholic bishops and priests at the start, but more recently including some protestant clergy as well.
But ladies, "you ain’t seen nothing yet!" With five conservative Republican Catholic men now in firm control of the US Supreme Court, the other four female, liberal, Jewish members might as well be wallpaper at the Supreme Court, until another vacancy develops under a more liberal administration.
Abortion is just one of the many fronts in the war of the celibate male Catholic hierarchy against the rest of us. As I explain more thoroughly at churchvsex.html, once the all male Roman Catholic hierarchy had set themselves apart from the rest of the world by requiring that they all be celibate for the rest of the time, they couldn't let everybody else enjoy what they would no longer be able to enjoy themselves. Although they might not be able to prevent everybody else from having sex, they could make it as difficult to enjoy and as burdensome as possible, which is what they did when it came to any number of issues such as divorce and remarriage, masturbation, birth or pregnancy-control, using a condum even for protection against AIDS or STDs, abortion, artificial insemination, or stem-cell research.

The Church has long "tradition" of opposing abortion

One way the Church tries to get around the fact that neither the Bible, nor Jesus, ever said a word in condemnation of abortion, is to point out that several of the most revered early teachers and clergy of the church opposed abortion. They view such teaching as a sacred "Tradition" which is of equal value and authority as "the Holy Word" of the bible.
The only thing that the www.priestsforlife.org/magisterium/
earlychurchfathers/fatherscover.html web site wants the Catholic faithful to know is what these "Fathers" or "Doctors" of the Church taught against abortion.
But here are some of the other things taught by these same "authorities":

St. Ambrose (339-397), Bishop of Milan and one of the four early "Doctors of the Church" wrote treatises extolling virginity and demanding that people have as little sex as possible. At the time, priests were still allowed to marry and Ambrose demanded that they should give up sex. They had, according to him, to refrain from intercourse with their own wives. The rest of the population should be reminded that the purpose of sex was procreation. Having sex with one's pregnant wife was unacceptable." He also considered it shameful for older people to have sex!

Jovinian, a Catholic theologian, incurred the Church's wrath by disputing Mary's virginity. He contended that married and celibate life were of equal merit, and tried to teach that Mary retained her virginity at conception but that she lost it at child-birth. For publishing a book containing such "heresies", Jovinian was excommunicated by Pope Siricius. The Church continues to teach that Mary's hymen remained intact.

Here is the way St. John Chrysostom expressed his contempt for women:
" What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature painted with fair colours!"
[ St John Chrysostom in his homilies on Matthew's gospel, written around AD 390 (Matthew 19:10), explaining why it is not good to marry, cited by Malleus Maleficarum, Pt I, q 6.]

St. Jerome, the author of the Latin "Vulgate" translation of the bible which has been the Roman church's official bible through most of its history since the 4th century, disliked sex so much he taught that Adam and Eve would never have engaged in it if they hadn't fallen into sin. He maintained that before the fall the first human couple were virgins in Paradise, and were only married as a result of their fall from grace, once they were cast out of Paradise. ( It was apparently contrary to God's plan that Adam and Eve would eventually get around to actually using the sex organs that God had built into them! ) Jerome taught that 'The truth is that, in view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean.'
Jerome regarded marriage as tolerable only because new virgins were generated as a result. Women were gateways to the Devil, the way of evil, the sting of the scorpion. As one modern biblical commentator has noted "The letters of Jerome teem with loathing of the female which occasionally sounds deranged".
"As long as a woman is for birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman, and will be called a man."
[St Jerome, Comm. in Epist. ad Ephes. III, 5]

St. Augustine
( one of the greatest of the "Doctors of the Church" ) 'discovered' how evil sex was and how offensive sexual acts were, as even birth took place between the organs of defecation and urination. He was the man, according to the Catholic theologian Uta RankeHeinemann, who was responsible for welding Christianity and hostility to sexual pleasure into a systematic whole. To Augustine, original sin was transmitted through the sexual act, thereby making copulation evil. Even when taking place within marriage, coitus was evil. It could only be redeemed by aiming the sexual act at procreation. Augustine interprets original sin as Adam and Eve's decision to have sex with lust, instead of choosing to copulate without lust. According to this theory, unless saved through God's grace, original sin (transmitted through the sexual act) condemns all human beings to eternal death and damnation.
Augustine accepted that 'The union... of male and female for the purpose of procreation is the natural good of marriage. But he makes a bad use of this good who uses it beastially, so that his intention is on the gratification of lust.' Adultery was, of course, out of the question but Augustine developed the concept that even sex with your husband or wife could be sinful."

How much R E S P E C T do they D E S E R V E ?

Most of the moral objections to abortion have been developed over the years by male celibate priests, bishops and popes of the Roman Catholic Church. Those Protestants who don't know that need to read pages 283 thru 287 of the book "Crazy for God" by Frank Schaeffer. Frank and his famous father, Francis, were the ones most instrumental in making the pro-life cause the powerful movement it has become in the U.S.A. and in other parts of the world in the last generation. The following mid-1970's quote by Bishop Fulton J. Sheen sums up that chapter perfectly, "The problem is that abortion is perceived as a Catholic issue. I want you to help me change that. The unborn need more friends." (Bishop Sheen was one of the country's most influential Catholic clergy at the time)
Many people mistakenly believe that the pompous bishops and popes of the R.C. Church are entitled to respect and obedience because
they are so much smarter and better than the rest of us, "moral giants" so to speak.
But let the record show that what they have more often proven themselves to be
in real life is not moral giants, but moral pygmies.
Here is just one illustration of my reason for saying that.
Did you know that one of the things that most of the top Nazi leadership had in
common was that they all shared a Roman Catholic upbringing, and they never
publicly repudiated that faith? [ for much more, see JesusWouldBeFurious.Org/NaziLeadership.html ]
What is it about this church that it has produced so many vicious dictators - not
just in Germany, and in the many the other Catholic countries that made up the Nazi coalition -
but all over the world? The list would need to include Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, "Papa Doc" Duvalier and his successor "Baby Doc" Duvalier of Haiti, and a whole panoply of Catholic dictators in the many countries of what is commonly called "Latin" America", but could just as well be called "Roman Catholic America", [ for much more, see CatholicArrogance.Org/ MotherofDictators.html ]
Most people have been deluded by the Roman Catholic Church and its allies into
believing that, despite the fact that the Jewish Holocaust occurred in the most Christian part of the whole world, and was conceived in and directed from a nation where 98% of the population
at the time identified themselves as "Christians", it is any philosophy other than its own "Christianity" that should be blamed for that monstrous crime, namely, paganism, secular humanism, liberal atheism, socialism, communism or whatever.
But the sad truth is that the Nazis came to power
by appealing to values which they and that sea of conservative Christianity had
in common, namely love of absolute power over the masses, on the one hand, and contempt for atheists, liberals,
communists and homosexuals along with Jews on the other. Many of us Christians in America insist that we are a "Christian" nation on the basis that some 70% of us are Christians. If that is true, then what does that make Germany, 98% of whose residents identified themselves as "Christians" at the time, just as their ancestors have been for some sixteen centuries or so! Whatever they were in God's eyes, throughout the Nazi period, most of the people of Germany viewed themselves as Christians, living in a Christian nation, fighting under the leadership of Christians very much like themselves, in the defense of "Christianity" from some of its greatest enemies : the age-old Jewish "Christ-killers" on the one hand, and a newer, related enemy, "godless communism" on the other.
Once Adolf Hitler had set Germany on the course of conquering as much of Europe,
and of exterminating as much of Europe's Jewish population as he could in the process, he knew that he was going to need millions of helpers to actually carry out all of that dirty work. Now, where could he find so many helpers? He didn't go to the planet Mars for them. He found about 2/3rds of them in the pews of his nation's Protestant churches and the other third in Germany's Roman Catholic churches.
Now although you may not have been aware of these facts, the Roman Catholic
bishops of Germany, and their "Supreme Pontiff" in Rome were very much aware
of the Catholic roots of so many of the Nazi leadership and of the hundreds of
thousands, if not millions, of the Roman Catholics who were carrying out the
monstrous plans of these leaders. Now, if there had been any moral giants among those bishops,
don't you think that they should have had the courage to stand up and shout
from the rooftops to warn the 98% of Germans who professed to be Christians
that God would certainly be displeased with them, if they played any role in "the
most atrocious sin of the century", the killing of innocent men, women, and
children by the millions, just because they were Jews, and that God might well
punish any of his followers for all eternity if they willingly played any part in that
most monstrous of crimes?
It's a sad fact that throughout that period there was hardly a peep from any but a
handful of Germany's church leaders in protest of the Jewish Holocaust. And not one
of the many Roman Catholic top Nazi leaders were able to commit any atrocity monstrous
enough to get themselves excommunicated by their church's bishops
or pope, not Adolf Hitler, not Joseph Goebbels, not Heinrich Himmler, nor any of
the many others who should have qualified for that public denunciation.
Instead, what these "moral pygmies" waisted their imposing moral authority on
during those horrible years was threatening their flocks with hellfire for eternity,
if they committed any number of their catalogue of what they called "mortal
sins", including not just abortion, but birth-control, marriage after divorce, homosexuality,
masturbation, viewing dirty pictures or forbidden movies, and of course, missing mass on
Sundays. What a disgrace! [ for plenty of substantiation for all of the above and much more,
see CatholicArrogance.Org/RC_scandal.html
]
Many who are striving to deny women access to abortion these days are fond of
comparing their pro-choice rivals here in
America to the Nazis, suggesting that terminating pregnancies on a large scale in
America today is just like the Jewish Holocaust in the 1940s. This argument is a
perfect illustration of how ignorant and / or dishonest the pro-life crusaders are,
because the very same Nazi leaders who were doing their best to exterminate the entire
Jewish people were not atheists or liberals, as conservatives would have people believe, but conservative Christian pro-life champions.
Yes, you heard that right. Despite the fact that the Nazis were "pro-death", at all
ages, when it came to the 1% or so of Germans who were Jewish, they were
even more "pro-life" than American pro-lifers, when it came to the vast majority of
Germany's women, who were Aryan, and Christian. They knew that they
were going to need to keep their birthrate as high as possible to keep up with the
high death rate their warmongering was going to be cost them. So they did what
American pro-lifers haven't yet even dreamed of doing here in America. They made the
aborting of a pregnancy by a German mother punishable by death, [ as I show at
CatholicArrogance.Org/AbortionUnderNazis.html. ]
This would not be the last time when it would be obvious how silly it is to call
people "pro-life", just because they oppose the termination of the life of any
human fetus, when those same people are showing nothing but contempt for fellow
human beings, once they have passed through the birth canal.

Here is what might well be described as "the field of battle" :

The first three rows of the graphic below represent the various stages of human pregnancy. The fourth row roughly represents the current mixed state of affairs in the U.S.A. as a result of the Roe v.Wade and other relevant decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. The fifth row (pink) represents the "pro-life" position, forbidding abortion throughout the entire pregnancy. The bottom (blue) row represents what currently exists in Canada, and what the "pro-choice" side would like to achieve in the U.S.A. as well.

The tug of war between the "pro-life" and the "pro-choice" camps:

Completed months of gestation at birth

0m.

under 4 m.

5.2 m.

5.4 m.

5.6 m.

5.9 m.

6.1 m.

6.4 m.

7.1 m.

8.0 m.

Completed weeks of gestation at birth

0w.

under 14weeks

22w.

23w.

24w.

25w.

26w.

27w.

30w.

34w.

Chance of survival for NORMAL pregnancies :

0.00
%

0-10 %

10-35 %

40-70 %

50-80 %

80-90 %

> 90 %

> 95 %

> 98 %

a woman's pregnancy
is nobody's business
but her own

States may regulate access to abortion,
so long as the life or health of
the mother is not threatened.

Here's is why "Liberals like Christ" argue
that genuine followers of Jesus Christ
should be Pro-Choice :

Preliminary clarifications :

First, why have clergymen been so obsessed about this issue of mostly female morality for thousands of years? Can you think of an issue that pertains especially to men that has held clergymen anywhere near this spellbound? And it's not because there haven't been more important and more pressing issues of that kind. To take just one example, when millions of perfectly innocent human beings were being tortured and exterminated under the direction of Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Josef Goebbels, and Reinhard Heydrich, ( all of whom were Roman Catholics, as I show at NaziLeadership.html), did Germany's Catholic bishops concentrate their attention on the killing being done by these men? Or did these churchmen spend endless hours, instead, mulling over and preaching about private, sexual sins instead? like masturbation, fornication, divorce, birth-control abortion and homosexuality?
As a male myself, I submit that we male clergy, judges, pundits and legislators, etc. ought to "mind our own business" and devote ourselves to improving the morals of the world's men. On the one hand, there's little evidence to support the idea that we are superior to women when it comes to morality, and on the other, there are plenty of issues of male immorality that need our attention, such as the way men abuse those who are physically inferior: women, children, minorities, and the entire populations of weaker nations. While males have been obsessing about the population in women's wombs, European Christian men ravaged the native populations of North, Central and South America. When they ran out of native-Americans to abuse, these same European Christian men and their descendants imported millions of other innocent human beings from Africa to enslave.

Before even beginning a discussion of the philosophical issue of "when life begins" and the moral issue of "what should or should not be done about that life", allow me to at least clear up some unnecessary confusion over the basic terms of this debate.

"When does life begin?" Sounds like a simple question, doesn't it. But it's not as simple as it looks. Everybody thinks they know what the word "life" means. But do they? When people engage in a discussion of "when life begins", do they understand that "life" doesn't actually "begin" at any stage of pregnancy, because life exists in the parents prior to conception, and "procreation" is simply the extension of that pre-existing life to new individuals. What is new is not "human life" but new hosts of human life, i.e. new "persons".
Without having to repeat it every time the word is used, therefore, it should always be understood that in the context of the abortion debate, the word "life" is a misnomer. So long as people speak of "life" when what they really mean is "person", no wonder they can't understand each other. People need to stop debating "When does a life begin?" and instead try to resolve the question, "When does a new person start his or her life?"

Another ambiguous expression that needs to be avoided in this debate is "human being". While it is obvious that there is a "being" from the moment of conception, and the entity in question is "human" (as opposed to some other species), rather than move the ball forward, arguing whether the embryo or the fetus is a "human being", only confuses the issue, as I believe the following illustration makes clear:
Although a human breast is both a "being" and "human", it would obviously be foolish for anyone to argue that because this human part is a "human being", terminating its connection with its human host and causing it's death would be tantamount to murder. This, therefore, is yet another reason to consistently use the precise terminology of "human person" in this debate.

We will now proceed to lay out :

Section A) of The Flaws of the "Pro-Life" Scriptural Arguments( They're nowhere as convincing
as pro-lifers would have you believe ! )

There is absolutely nothing wrong with people believing with all their heart, and soul and mind that a human person begins at conception, if that is what they choose to believe. It's even alright, in a democracy such as America, for people with such beliefs to promote legislation that would make abortion at any stage of pregnancy and in every instance murder. But it is wrong to claim the authority of the Jewish or the Christian Bible for such beliefs. If people want to adopt and promote such "extra-biblical" beliefs, then they should be honest enough to admit that there is no more support for them in the bible than there is for sending people to hell for playing cards, drinking or smoking in moderation, dancing, or practicing birth control. Conservative preachers have always had more reasons to send people to hell than Jesus gave them.

The fact is that no serious Christian or Jewish authority can legitimately claim that
the "pro-life" teaching is taught in any clear or straightforward way in the Bible.
The plain truth is that - – contrary to first impressions - – not one verse in the whole
Bible says anything unequivocally clear and direct against abortion, or about the moment
in time when a human person begins his or her individual life on earth.
The nearest the Bible comes to helping the Judeo-Christian community
settle the matter are a reference to miscarriage in Deuteronomy, one passage in Leviticus in which God seems to recommend abortion, a few Old Testament references to life before birth, and an episode
before John the Baptist's birth.
Keep in mind that the burden of proof is not on those
who don't know when human life begins or who don't
believe that it begins at conception to prove when it
does begin. The whole burden of proof is
on those who claim that the Bible entitles them
to demand that every Jew and/or Christian agree with
their contention that a fetus is a human being from the
moment of conception, and that taking that life from any
point thereafter is therefore murder, pure and simple.
Let's take a good look at each of the biblical arguments
in turn.

What does Luke 1:41–44 prove?

Here's my color code:

Red for Jesus' words

Purple for other biblical texts

"When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb.
And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry,
'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes
to me? For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child
in my womb leaped for joy."

If you are already convinced of the humanity
of the fetus before birth, then these verses may be very
compelling for you, but no theologian worth his salt would base
any doctrine on such casual references. Luke is
clearly not teaching anything about the nature of Elizabeth's
fetus. The context is clearly about the miraculous
nature of Mary's upcoming pregnancy. Even without
this miraculous context, the fact of Elizabeth's interpreting some movement within her womb as a human person "leaping for joy" proves nothing except for those determined to read into a situation much more than is actually stated.

What does Genesis 25:21–23 prove?

When I looked them up and read them the way bible literalists do, I discovered that, not only was there a human or two in Rebekah's womb during her pregnancy, but there were two whole nations in that poor woman's womb!

Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. The children struggled together within her; and she said, "If it is to be this way, why do I live?" So she went to inquire of the Lord. And the Lord said to her, "Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples born of you shall be divided; the one shall be stronger than the other, the elder shall serve the younger."
Don't expect literalists to be consistent about this. They will insist that God didn't actually mean literally that there were "two nations" in her womb, but he did mean literally that there were two full-fledged human persons in her womb.

Similarly, it's easy for those who are already convinced
of the humanity of the fetus before birth to find the following very compelling:

What does {Jeremiah 1:5} prove?

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born,
I set you apart."

Those who take this to mean that one becomes a human being
before birth – perhaps even at the moment of conception –
are simply overlooking the fact that the first part of the verse
makes it clear that what is being addressed here is not our
life on earth, but our existence in God's mind, which doesn't
simply begin before we are born, but before we are even conceived, and perhaps even before anything on earth came into
existence! Since God knows all things, and has
known all things from the beginning of time, surely the verse saying
that "he knew us before we were born" (and even before anything came into being on earth)
does not prove that we existed before we existed !
Right now, God knows the children who will be born to your
great-grand children. But does that
make those future children living human beings here and now ?

What does { Psalm 139:19 } prove?

Likewise, Pro-life people who read
"You knit me together in my mother's womb,"
are convinced this proves that
God completes our creation while we are still in our mother's
womb. That may be one way to understand those words.
But anyone who wishes may also take the words to mean that we come
into existence as a bunch of tissues woven together in our
mother's womb with some kind of divine knitting needle.
But where does anyone derive the right to deny that this verse
may be saying nothing more than 'God is responsible for the
way a human being's body develops in its mother's womb'?
The verse says nothing about when God infuses that fetus with
the human soul which is what makes it a distinct human person.

What does {Exodus 21: 22–25} prove?

The following may be the bible passage that comes closest to addressing the abortion issue,
and the crucial question of the debate at that, i.e. the nature of the human fetus:

“If men struggle with each other and (one of them) strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury, he shall surely be fined as the woman’s husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury, then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

THIS is the way the conservative Christian opponents of abortion understand this passage:

"If men struggle with each other and (one of them) strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury (to the fetus), he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury (to the fetus), then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life (of the fetus), eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

THIS is the way most Jewish scholars and more liberal Christian supporters of choice understand this passage:

"If men struggle with each other and (one of them) strike a woman with child so that she gives birth prematurely, yet there is no injury (to the mother), he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide. But if there is any further injury (to the mother), then you shall appoint as a penalty life for life (of the mother), eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, bruise for bruise."

"Premature delivery" didn't have the same meaning 3,000 years ago that it does today. Then, it meant certain death within minutes, or hours at most. So how could a fetus born prematurely not suffer any injury, or additional injury? Upon reflection, the phrases "yet there is no injury" and " there is no further injury" can't relate to the fetus, which is already sure to die. The injuries in question must, therefore, have to do with the mother.
And "he shall surely be fined as the woman's husband may demand of him, and he shall pay as the judges decide" spells out the penalty for killing a mere fetus, as opposed to killing a human being.
If then, Exodus 21: 22–25 is "the word of God", the bottom line is that, unlike the loss of the mother' life, for which the penalty would be the life of the one responsible for the loss of her life, the penalty for taking the much less significant life of the fetus is merely paying a "fine".
Here is a great article on the views of Jewish scholars on this controversial passage : https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-fetus-in-jewish-law/

According to {Numbers 5: 11–31}

"The Lord" appears to be instructing the clergy to use an abortifacient drink as a means of exposing a wife's infidelity– wouldn't make much sense, if God views abortion as inherently evil. –

"The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: 'Speak to the Israelites and say to them: If any man's wife goes astray and is unfaithful to him, if a man has had intercourse with her but it is hidden from her husband, so that she is undetected though she has defiled herself, and there is no witness against her since she was not caught in the act; if a spirit of jealousy comes on him, and he is jealous of his wife who has defiled herself; or if a spirit of jealousy comes on him, and he is jealous of his wife, though she has not defiled herself; then the man shall bring his wife to the priest. And he shall bring the offering required for her, one-tenth of an ephah of barley flour. He shall pour no oil on it and put no frankincense on it, for it is a grain offering of jealousy, a grain offering of remembrance, bringing iniquity to remembrance.
Then the priest shall bring her near, and set her before the Lord;
the priest shall take holy water in an earthen vessel, and take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water. The priest shall set the woman before the Lord, dishevel the woman's hair, and place in her hands a grain offering of remembrance, which is the grain offering of jealousy. In his own hand the priest shall have the water of bitterness that brings the curse. Then the priest shall make her take an oath, saying, "If no man has lain with you, if you have not turned aside to uncleanness while under your husband's authority, be immune to this water of bitterness that brings the curse. But if you have gone astray while under your husband's authority, if you have defiled yourself and some man other than your husband has had intercourse with you," let the priest make the woman take the oath of the curse and say to the woman "the Lord make you an execration and an oath among your people, when the Lord makes your uterus drop, your womb discharge; now may this water that brings the curse enter your bowels and make your womb discharge, your uterus drop!" And the woman shall say, "Amen. Amen." Then the priest shall put these curses in writing, and wash them off into the water of bitterness. He shall make the woman drink the water of bitterness that brings the curse, and the water that brings the curse shall enter her and cause bitter pain. The priest shall take the grain offering of jealousy out of the woman's hand, and shall elevate the grain offering before the Lord and bring it to the altar; and the priest shall take a handful of the grain offering, as its memorial portion, and turn it into smoke on the altar, and afterward shall make the woman drink the water.
When he has made her drink the water, then, if she has defiled herself and has been unfaithful to her husband, the water that brings the curse shall enter into her and cause bitter pain, and her womb shall discharge, her uterus drop, and the woman shall become an execration among her people.
But if the woman has not defiled herself and is clean, then she shall be immune and be able to conceive children. This is the law in cases of jealousy, when a wife, while under her husband's authority, goes astray and defiles herself, or when a spirit of jealousy comes on a man and he is jealous of his wife; then he shall set the woman before the Lord, and the priest shall apply this entire law to her.
The man shall be free from iniquity, but the woman shall bear her iniquity."

In this instance, should the priest and husband be excused of the "murder of an innocent child" because God put them up to it? If so, what kind of God recommends such murders in order to expose the adultery of their mothers (while doing nothing comparable about the sins of the missing fathers and/or unfaithful husbands)?

According to {Ecclesiastes 11:5 } (NRSV)

(For those at least who accept the book of Ecclesiastes as part of their bible), this is the Bible's bottom line on the nature of the "pre-born":

"You do not know (i.e. NO ONE knows) how the breath comes to the bones in the mother’s womb."

(or according to the Roman Catholic Revised Standard Version:) "You do not know how the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child."

Why doesn't "God's Word" clearly condemn abortion ?

Whenever I hear fellow Christians asserting with absolute certitude that God or Christ could not possibly condone abortion, I ask them the following:
If you really believe that God is all-knowing and that the Bible is God's Word, how can you possibly explain the fact that neither the God of the Old Testament, nor Jesus, nor anyone else in the New Testament used even one of the 31,173 verses of the Bible to do what crusaders like you are striving to do in God's name, namely, to try to prevent as many as possible of the millions of abortions that have been taking place throughout the world every year not just in recent times, but even in Jesus' day and in Old Testament times? (You may only have learned about this tragedy recently, but the world has known about abortion from ancient times on.) Do you imagine that God and Jesus have been totally mute on what you view as the most important moral issue of all time because :

"God's Word" was not written for 21st century America, but only for "the Holy Land" and for "the old days"?

God (and/or Jesus) didn't know what you are so sure that you know, i. e. that a human being's personhood begins at the moment of conception?

God didn't know that abortions have been performed from ancient times (mostly by means of abortifacient herbs #2 )?

God didn't know or care that, without clear condemnations of this practice, billions of innocent human beings over the centuries would be killed and billions of adults would be murderers themselves, or accessories to murder?

God didn't have the courage it takes to wage war on popular sins?

God was squeamish about sex and uncomfortable talking about it?

God and/or Jesus are in effect nothing but lifeless dummies, requiring "Christian Conservative" ventriloquists to speak for them? The only answer I ever get to these important questions is the very inadequate one that the Bible's commandment "Thou shalt not kill" is all that is needed.
Yet, the same bible that quotes God himself as commanding "Thou shalt not kill" also quotes him unhesitatingly killing all kinds of people, and directing his followers to do likewise. See WhatKindOfGod.org
So, how do we know that "Thou shalt not kill" covers this very unique situation of terminating human pregnancies, (but doesn't apply to the killing of animals at will, or to the killing of people we don't approve of, in war and prisons)? Didn't God know how ineffective that vague command would be, if it was intended to cover unborn fetuses? Why did God spell out in excruciating detail so many far less important commandments in the Bible, and then run out of breath, so to speak, when it came to the often tiny, easily overlooked victims of abortion?
If it's against God's plan for fetuses to die before birth, and if killing them is just as much infanticide as killing a baby after it is born, then how can an omnipotent, God allow (according to the best scientific estimates) some one third or one fourth of all the "babies" conceived to be killed in the womb by natural abortions (or "miscarriages"), many of them too early to even to be noticed by the naked human eye, but certainly known by an omniscient God? Some of these happen before the first missed menstrual period and usually are not clinically recognized. Spontaneous abortion typically is defined as a clinically recognized (ie, by blood test or ultrasound) pregnancy loss before 20 weeks' gestation." See medical resources like www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic5.htm, which reports that:

This situation is especially troublesome for Catholics who, for centuries, were taught by their childless, celibate clergy that the best that babies and fetuses could hope for in the hereafter, if they died without the benefit of a good Catholic baptism, was an eternity in the state of "Limbo". Since that has been the fate of the majority of children in the underdeveloped parts of the world throughout history as well as today, and it is estimated that for every human pregnancy that produces a live baby, one and perhaps even two pregnancies are aborted spontaneously, according to the Church there would have been destined to be many more souls in "Limbo" for all eternity than in heaven and hell combined. Of course, they have been forced to finally abandon this ridiculous teaching of theirs on Limbo ( see www.CatholicArrogance. Org/Catholic/Limbo.html), and in a few hundred more years, they may be forced to abandon their untenable positions on birth-control and abortion as well.

When do human-beings begin?

As for the question of when a human fetus becomes a human person,
in the absence of any clear proof, biblical or other, Christians
– along with people of other faiths or no faith – are entitled
to liberal or conservative beliefs in this matter for themselves.
All those who want to make the pro-life stance a principal
tenet of their faith are entitled to do so.
They should be respected, just like any other religion,
so long as they show the same respect for those who don't
share their faith. But, since Jesus clearly condemned
those who would burden others "with impossible demands
that they themselves don't even try to keep," what is Christian about condemning others for a sin the Bible itself
does not even recognize?
The fact of the matter is
that conservative Christians who believe that human life begins at conception
have no right to force that belief on fellow Christians, let alone
on those who do not share their Christian faith!
Far from having any right
to burden others with their beliefs, all that such people have, is an
obligation to carry all of the burdens which that belief imposes
on them. When pro-life people become aware of
a mother's intention to terminate a pregnancy, and are convinced
that a human being's life is at stake, such people do not have a God-given right to force that mother or anybody else to believe as they
do. But they do have an obligation to act on their beliefs
themselves. What they should learn from God's Word
is not a right to obligate others, but a responsibility to obligate
themselves. They should themselves offer to take and raise any and all of those whom they view as imminent murder victims .
After raising our first five children, my wife and
I adopted first one, then another, then another,
until we had taken full responsibility for five children
that others had brought into the world, three
of them severely handicapped. We can't
help but wonder why more middle-class Christians
like ourselves, who claim to revere the same
Scriptures as we, are not doing as we have done.
No one likes abortion, but since it might
be said "abortion you will always have with you,"
we need to deal with it. Why are those
Christians who insist on viewing abortion as a
tragic victimization of innocent human beings,
so concerned with imposing on others what they
think the Scriptures should say, instead of
attending themselves to what those Scriptures
actually do say on its lines?
Take the following passages, for example:

According to {Matthew 25:34-46}

"Then I, the King,
shall say to those at my right, "Come, blessed of my Father,
into the Kingdom prepared for you from the founding of the
world. For I was hungry and you fed me; I was thirsty
and you gave me water; I was a stranger – and you invited me
into your homes; naked and you clothed me; sick and in prison,
and you visited me."
Then these righteous ones will reply, "Sir, when did we
ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you
anything to drink? Or a stranger, and help you?
Or naked, and clothe you? When did we ever see you sick
or in prison, and visit you?"
And I, the King, will tell them, "When you did it to these
my brothers you were doing it to me!" Then I will turn
to those on my left and say, "Away with you, you cursed ones,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons.
For I was hungry and you wouldn't feed me; thirsty, and you
wouldn't give me anything to drink; a stranger, and you
refused me hospitality; naked, and you wouldn't clothe me;
sick, and in prison, and you didn't visit me."
Then they will reply, "Lord, when did we ever see you
hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison,
and not help you?" And I will answer, "When you
refused to help the least of these my brothers, you were
refusing help to me." And they shall go away into eternal
punishment; but the righteous into everlasting life."

According to
{1 John 3:17-29 }

"But if someone who is supposed to be a Christian has
money enough to live well, and sees a brother in need
and won't help him – how can God's love be within him?
Little children, let us stop just saying we love people;
let us really love them, and show it by our actions.
Then we will now for sure, by our actions, that we are
on God's side, and our consciences will be clear, even
when we stand before the Lord.

According to
{Luke 10:25-37}

"One day an expert on Moses' laws came to test Jesus'
orthodoxy by asking him this question: "Teacher, what
does a man need to do to live forever in heaven?"
Jesus replied, "What does Moses' law say about it?"
"It says," he replied, "that you must love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul,and with all your
strength, and with all your mind. And you must love
your neighbor just as much as you love yourself."
"Right!" Jesus told him. "Do this and you shall live!"
The man wanted to justify himself {i.e. his lack of love for
some neighbors}, so he asked,
"Which neighbors?" Jesus replied with an illustration:
"A Jew going on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked
by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes and money,
and beat him up and left him lying half dead beside the road.
"By chance a priest came along; and when he saw
the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road
and passed him by. A temple-assistant walked over
and looked at him lying there, but then went on.
But a despised Samaritan (a foreigner) came along, and
when he saw him, he felt deep pity. Kneeling beside
him the Samaritan soothed his wounds with medicine and
bandaged them. Then he put the man on his donkey
and walked along beside him till they came to an inn,
where he nursed him through the night. The next day
he handed the innkeeper two silver coins and told him
to take care of the man. "If his bill runs higher than that,"
he said, "I'll pay the difference the next time I am here."
Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor
to the bandits' victim? The man replied, "The one who
showed him some pity." Then Jesus said, "Yes, now
go and do the same."

Passages such as these are what moved my wife and me
to adopt our five children.
Instead of being in the front line of those
condemning others for the practice of abortion, we
believe the Bible's teaching should lead the clergy
to be in the front line of those offering to save
"baby human beings," by taking and raising them
themselves? Although celibacy bars the Roman Catholic
clergy from marriage, it doesn't bar them from parenting children that others have procreated but don't want to raise. Why do so many Roman Catholic bishops and priests
expect lay men and women to do what they
conveniently avoid doing themselves? It's no
excuse to claim that they cannot combine their
profession with child-rearing. Men in every
other profession and trade manage that responsibility?
The clergy of every other denomination do it.
And even the Catholic clergy did it for ten centuries!
How many clergy and other "pro-life" champions
are leading the way by volunteering to take the most
unwanted of babies: the severely handicapped,
"crack babies," the victims of AIDS, and the like?

Isn't it curious how prosperous "Conservative"
Christians, who vehemently resist most every
tax-funded program to help the needy, are such
enthusiastic supporters of the "pro-life" cause?
They want to make endorsement of this
non-biblical belief the touchstone of Christianity,
and want to see every fetus come to term, no matter what the cost is
to someone other than themselves !
And these very same people resent immigration, welfare,
nutrition, head start, guaranteed health insurance for everyone,
universal employment, minimum wage, civil rights for all,
and even housing and education programs
for those very children, once born. What is so different about this one cause, that
it enables the well-to-do, who resist just about
every other form of biblical compassion, to
embrace this one? Could it be that it costs
them nothing? They get to be held up as
morally upstanding people by coming out in favor of
imposing on others, burdens which the
Bible does not impose on them.

Considering what 1 John, Ch. 4, v. 20 says, i.e. :&nbsp

"Those who say, "I love God" and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen." It might likewise be said that "Those who say, 'we love embryos', whose humanity they cannot see, while not being concerned about their brothers or sisters, whose humanity cannot be denied, are liars."

What's moral or heroic about conservative,male churchmen and/or politicians
treating the conscience of women as inferior to
their's , and interfering with the most private
and intimate decisions of women ?

Let's talk about the leading opponents of birth-control & abortion, the Roman Catholic hierarchy

Most people would agree that today's "pro-life" movement is the fruition of the teaching of some of the most Conservative of Roman Catholic Popes. Many people mistakenly believe that the Catholic Church has always believed that human life begins at conception, which is what drives the church's opposition to abortion in any and all circumstances and to every form of "artificial" birth-control (because these all involve termination of the life of a fertilized egg). The truth is that the church has see-sawed over the centuries between belief in human life beginning at conception vs. its beginning at the time of "ensoulment" at some unknowable later stage of pregnancy.
Since the Catholic Church has played such a prominent role in the promotion of the current radical "pro-life" position, we believe it deserves special attention from everybody effected by its teaching whether they be Catholics or not. We address the specific problems with the teaching of the Roman Catholic hierarchy at CatholicArrogance.Org/Catholic/abortionteaching.html.

Regarding others who
claim to base their views
of abortion on the Bible:

As a life-long devout Christian, and a
Bible-guided clergyman all of my adult life, I wish that the Bible were more helpful in resolving
these questions. But the Holy Scriptures simply don't resolve every moral issue, and they certainly don't address the crucial issues involved in the morality of abortion, as these pages of mine show.
Jesus said that the Father didn't even share all of his
knowledge with him, about the timing of the end of
the world, for example. Unlike the rest of us who have no direct
line to God, some people claim to have special knowledge
of God's mind. But, in truth they don't have any more
access to God's mind and will than you do.
In this connection, whenever self-assured preachers
go around accusing others of "murder", I can't help but wonder if Jesus is saying,
"There you go again!"
How similar this scenario is to the one related in

{ John 7:53–8:3-11 }

"As Jesus was speaking, the Jewish leaders and
Pharisees (i.e. the leaders of the "religious right"
of that time) brought a woman caught in adultery and
placed her out in front of the staring crowd.
"Teacher," they said to Jesus, "this woman was
caught in the very act of adultery.
Moses' law says to kill her. What about it?"
They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use
against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust
with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he
stood up again and said,
"All right, hurl the stones at her until she dies.
But only he who never sinned may throw the first!"
Then he stooped down again and wrote some more in the dust.
And the Jewish leaders slipped away one by one, beginning with the eldest,
until only Jesus was left in front of the crowd with the woman.
Then Jesus stood up again and said to her, "Where are your accusers?
Didn't even one of them condemn you?" "No, sir," she said.
And Jesus said, "Neither do I. Go and sin no more."

( Given the number of conservatives who write to me in order to emphasize the last words, maybe the story should have continued : "One of those shamed by Jesus was close enough to hear what he said to her and ran to catch up with the others and said to them. 'Guess what Jesus said to her after you left. Maybe we'll get a chance to stone her after all, if she falls into sin again!' And they all agreed to keep a close eye on her." If such people hadn't missed the point of this story, they would realize that "Go and sin no more" applies to their judgmentalism as much as this woman's adultery. )
Jesus elaborated on this theme in this other familiar passage:

According to {Matthew 7:3-5}

"And why worry about a speck in the eye of a brother when you have
a beam in your own? Should you say, 'Friend, let me help you get that speck
out of your eye,' when you can't even see, because of the beam in your own? Hypocrite! First get rid of the beam. Then you can see to help your brother."

When the religious zealots of our day throw stones at women who don't feel obligated to complete their pregnancies,
aren't these men doing exactly what Jesus condemned? Even though the woman had been caught "in the very act of adultery" (a serious biblical sin), Jesus condemned those who wanted to throw stones at her, not only because they were sinners, but because they were overlooking their own sinfulness in their zeal to condemn someone else's.
We can only guess what Jesus wrote in the dust, but it surely
shamed the holier than thou finger–pointing men rather than the woman "caught in the very act of adultery". But what I have found, in a very extensive study of every instance in the four gospels where Jesus showed which kinds of behavior bothered him enough to make him speak his mind about them, is that Jesus had much, much more to say about the sins of clerics than those of "the faithful" , as I show in this very careful and unique study of the Gospels :

Since there is next to nothing in the Scriptures to justify condemning a woman for the premature termination of a pregnancy, but literally scores of passages condemning the sins of clerics, what would Jesus say about all of the male clerics pointing accusing fingers at women today? All we need to do to find out, is to read what Jesus said . . .

According to Matthew 23:1-14, for example:

"You would think these religious leaders and these Pharisees were Moses, the way they keep making up so many laws! . . . It may be all right to do what they say, but above anything else, don't follow their example. For they don't do what they tell you to do. They load you with impossible demands that they themselves don't even try to keep." (This wouldn't have to do with things like birth-control, abortion, clerical celibacy, perpetuating male dominance over women, would it? ). . .
"Everything they do is done for show . . . They act holy by wearing on their arms little prayer boxes with Scripture verses inside, and by lengthening the memorial fringes of their robes. And how they love to sit at the head table at banquets and in the reserved pews in the synagogue! How they enjoy the deference paid them on the streets and to be called 'Teacher' and 'Master'! Don't ever let anyone call you that. For only God is your Teacher and all of you are on the same level, as brothers. And don't address anyone here on earth as 'Father,' for only God in heaven should be addressed like that. And don't be called 'Master,' for only one is your master, even the Messiah. . . Woe to you, Pharisees, and you other religious leaders. Hypocrites! For you won't let others enter the kingdom of heaven and won't go in yourselves."

Are these words of Jesus nothing but a quaint "dead letter", now that we call our houses of worship "churches", instead of "synagogues", and "reserved pews in the synagogue" have been superseded by ornate thrones in basilicas and cathedrals?

How can anyone read Jesus' demands that his disciples shun titles of honor, and never suspect that if Jesus considered "Father" and "Teacher" objectionable, he would explode over "Monsignor" (which is French for "My Lord"), "Your Excellency", "Your Eminence", "Your Holiness", "The Holy Father", "Supreme Pontiff", and perhaps most presumptuous of all, "Vicar of (i.e. stand-in for) Christ", the equivalent of "Vice-Messiah" ! Before tackling the specks (or whatever) that is in the eyes of others, particularly women, and doing so much reading between the lines to do it, shouldn't the clergy start by noticing what Jesus had to say to clergymen themselves right there on the lines?
A billion or so people on earth look to the Roman Catholic hierarchy for moral guidance. Recent books, by Roman Catholics John Cornwell and Gordon Zahn, raise some serious questions about the leadership their church has been getting from the pompous, autocratic, aristocratic, Roman Pope and bureaucratic Curia, a leadership which exemplifies the very opposite of what Jesus instructed his disciples to be and to do. Get a taste of what these scholars have uncovered at
www.CatholicArrogance.Org/RCscandal.html.
At the very time the celibate hierarchy of the R. C. Church claimed to know with absolute certainty that married couples who practiced birth control, or abortion, and young men or women who masturbated would surely burn forever in hell (for sins not even identified as transgressions in the Bible), these self-proclaimed "men of God" could not figure out that God might want them to tell those under their moral guidance that it was a much more serious "mortal sin" for Roman Catholics to work (in any number of ways) for a regime that was engaged in the mass-murder of many millions of Jews, not to mention many Poles, Roma, handicaps, gays, liberals, socialists, communists and Jehovah Witnesses !
How sad that many of the "faithful" are so misguided that they believe the claims of such "men of the cloth" to speak for God !

The Directory

A) Having laid out the Flaws of the "Pro-Life"Scriptural Arguments, here on page 1,
let's proceed to additional pages for

Notes:

#2Herbally-induced abortions

In his infinite wisdom, God knew that herbally induced
abortions were a common practice from the earliest days
of the Bible. Abortion was widespread through much of the ancient world. A herb called silphium, a variety of giant fennel, was so effective that during Greek and Roman times that it was harvested to extinction. It could not be cultivated and grew only in the deserts of Libya. God also certainly knew that abortions would become more and more common as medical knowledge progressed over the centuries. If God views abortion as murder, why wouldn't he have made that clear, instead of allowing so many to become either needless victims on the one hand or unwitting murderers on the other? See much more about this at http://www.libchrist.com/other/abortion/ru486.html .
Not only did they not view early abortions as being abortions, but many prominent Catholics saw nothing wrong with compiling lists of known abortifacient herbs and discovering new ones. For example, in her treatises, the 12th century abbess and later saint Hildegard of Bingen recommended tansy as an effective abortifacient. (and) In the 13th century physician and cleric Peter of Spain wrote a book called Thesaurus Pauperum (literally Treasure of the Poor) containing a long list of early-stage abortifacients, including rue, pennyroyal, and other mints. Peter of Spain became Pope John XXI in 1276.
[ from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_abortion ]

A related question that I ask Christian pro-life advocates is "Why are you transforming an issue which is not even mentioned in the Hebrew or the Christian Bibles into the single most pressing moral issue of our time? And by the same token, just because Conservative Republicans may be willing to work with you when it comes to the abortion issue, how do you, as professed "Christians", not recognize that it's the liberal Democratic party that is always siding with the poor, the homeless, the uninsured, the underpaid, and minorities of all kinds, as Jesus Christ instructed his followers to do, over the constant objection of the conservative Republican Party?

"Your pro choice argument is among the best I've seen so far. I had no idea that Hitler was against abortion ! Lol lol lol. I guess this fact effectively renders Ray Comfort's 180 movie as pure garbage. Lol now thats funny. The thing is I am a follower of Christ who has recently switched from a pro-life position to a pro-choice position. This is no small feat considering I very rarely switch positions on anything. In Christ Josh "